Continents and oceans — Geography, 7–10 years
Earth's large areas of land and water form a useful first picture of our planet. Geography, 7–10 years.
A world in big pieces
A continent is a very large connected area of land, such as Africa or Europe. An ocean is a very large connected area of salt water, such as the Atlantic or Pacific; together, these big pieces help us describe where places are on Earth.
Why name them?
People needed a shared way to talk about faraway places, plan journeys and compare parts of the planet. Naming continents and oceans makes a sentence like “a ship crossed the Atlantic from Europe to North America” clear to many people.
Following a journey
Imagine a plane flying from Lisbon to Tokyo. Lisbon is in Europe, and the plane travels east across the Atlantic, Europe and Asia; it does not cross the Atlantic on this route, because Europe and Asia form the large land area between the two cities. The Pacific lies between Asia and Tokyo’s side of the world.
The common mix-up
A continent is not the same as a country, and an ocean is not simply any piece of water. It is easy to mix them up because maps show countries, continents and oceans together, in different colours and at different sizes; remember that a country is a political area, while these are huge land or water regions.
Where it helps
These names appear in atlases, travel plans, news reports and lessons about animals or trade. If a report says that turtles cross the Indian Ocean, or that goods travel from Asia to Europe, the big-region names let you picture the journey before you know every city.
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